Of Snow and Blankets and More Snow
by Rhianwen
Summary: [Completion! We have completion!] We all know the plot of a blanket-fic, right? One guy, one girl, one blanket, and a whole lotta snow. Will Excel figure out the best way to keep warm, or will this tired old plot be infused with some new life?
1. Those Crazy Russian Names

Excel Saga Fan Fiction Cliché: Blanket-fic Edition

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Summary: We all know the plot of a "blanket-fic", right? Those of you who don't, you are the blessed few. Picture this: one guy, one girl, one blanket, a whole lotta snow. What's the best way to keep warm? Will Excel figure it out, or will this tired old dog of a plot finally be infused with some new life?

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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters depicted within this piece of…whatever descriptor you feel like applying. I somehow don't think the guy who does own them will be too offended at what I'm doing to them, based on what he did to them himself.

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More of ten than not, the grandest, most thrilling, and most all-encompassing epic tales of human joy and human sorrow and human courage are spurred into action by an incident that is, for lack of a better word, utterly insignificant in appearance. That would, of course, be four words, and perhaps "silly" would be just as accurate, but all of this is beside the point.

The point is, of course, that if you trace almost any grand epic back to its roots, you will likely find them to be ignominious, a little embarrassing, and lacking in any grandeur whatsoever.

Thus, it becomes easy to imagine any silly, pointless chance happening as leading eventually to an epic quest for the future of the world.

The tale that will now be related to my reader(s) was very decidedly not one of those times.

Indeed, from the moment that Ilpalazzo announced the new mission of the day, which was to repair the pit in the floor of ACROSS's underground headquarters, currently out of order, one could nearly feel the plot spiraling downward into the depths of stupidity. And this was even before he continued on to add that, to retrieve the necessary parts for the necessary repairs, it would be…er, necessary to take a roadtrip to Siberia.

   "Your most faithful Excel is thrilled that her Lord Ilpalazzo is trusting her and agent Hyatt with such an important mission!" Excel Excel gushed, bouncing wildly about the room with all the restraint and composure of a hummingbird after a quart or two of espresso, of which there were currently three buzzing around as a result of the last disastrously failed mission.

Oddly enough if it had been anyone else, but perfectly normally considering Excel's nature as Excel, it did not occur to her to wonder if, since the pit was mostly for her benefit, it would be in her best interest to purposely fail at the mission, now that there was no pit to be dropped down.

Of course, there was still the option that Lord Ilpalazzo could simply shoot her.

However, he had seemed oddly squiffy as of late about anything that involved a gun being aimed at Excel.

Runoff, it was supposed, from the 25th episode.

Either way, the thought of intentional failure in the name of self-preservation never once crossed Excel's mind, and she and Hyatt prepared to set out, their goal firmly established.

Until, that is, Hyatt collapsed in a heap on the floor and lay, unmoving, except for the trickle of blood leaking onto the tile.

Had this been anyone else in the world, the response of the two still-alive people in the room might have been different.

However, as it was Hyatt, Excel simply laughed nervously, rubbing the back of her head.

   "Heh…I guess Hatchan's dead again."

Ilpalazzo simply pushed his glasses back into place and sighed in annoyance, knowing that he would regret his next words long and thoroughly.

   "Very well. Agent Hyatt will remain here to guard the headquarters. Excel, I will accompany you to Some Little Town In Siberia That Exists Only As a Plot Point, Which We Shall Probably Fail To Reach Before the Plot Kicks In."

   "Those Russians come up with some weird names," Excel commented briefly, before blushing brightly and acquiring a bad case of "shiny-eyes" as she was struck with the implication that this turn of events could very well result in her being alone with Lord Ilpalazzo for…a longish time. Then another thought joined this one, where the two proceeded to form a very short conga-line around Excel's brain to the sound of music that only she could hear. "Lord Ilpalazzo!" she gasped. "Surely one such as you would not reduce himself to such a menial task as this! Your most faithful Excel can handle it on her own!"

For a brief moment, the caped man was tempted. Very tempted. But, he recalled, Siberia was a nasty place to cross on foot. And since ACROSS had yet to invest in a vehicle of any sort, this would be his senior agent's mode of transport. More experienced and skilled explorers – which actually covered a fairly large portion of the world's population – had been known to perish while attempting such a trip alone.

Not, as Ilpalazzo would have hastened to tell anyone who asked, that he was particularly concerned for Excel's safety. It was simply a chilling thought to have to listen to her constant chatter the next time she got going – which was surely due to happen any second – because the pit was still out of order.

How Ilpalazzo would have explained why he expected to need the pit should he lose Excel to her own stupidity remains a mystery to this day.

   "No, Excel," he finally sighed reluctantly. "It is a long, difficult journey on foot, and with a mission of such great importance, we cannot risk failure."

Still, Excel was unwilling to concede the point.

   "But…but…Lord Ilpalazzo, doing such demeaning leg-work?!"

   "Leg-work?" Ilpalazzo repeated with a smirk. "Oh, I don't think so, Excel."

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   "Lord Ilpalazzo, your Excel would like to ask if it would have maybe been a little more efficient maybe to maybe buy a sled or some horses, or a pack of work-turtles or pigeons or something," Excel shouted above the howling, biting wind once she found her breath again after a particularly strong gust made its way up the bottom of her long, furry, and weather-appropriate coat like some perverted fanboy.

Steeling herself, she gave the reigns a desperate tug to keep the gigantic throne draped in red fabric, adapted for the purposes of travel over snowy plains by a pair of old skis duct-taped to the bottom, in motion.

  _ I'll be screwed if this dumb-ass thing stops completely_, she lamented silently. If she could just make it to the hill sloping downwards a few hundred feet ahead…

   "Remember, Excel," Ilpalazzo said absently, fumbling with his hand-held dating simulator game. Really, video games and wooly mittens did not mix well… "The measure of a man's freedom is what he can do without. The same applies to an organization. Such a luxury as a vehicle is simply unnecessary to ACROSS."

   "Oh, that's so endlessly noble, Lord Ilpalazzo!" Excel squealed, a rush of adrenaline causing her to burst into a run. "To abandon your own comfort and convenience for the glory of ACROSS! Excel is inspired, and has risen above her crippling fatigue and the biting cold! Hail Ilpalazzo!" she concluded, fatally stopping dead and turning around to throw out her customary salute.

This would have likely been no problem, save the annoyance of another delay, had the relentlessly energetic young woman's sprint not carried her, the throne, and within the throne, Ilpalazzo to the start of the hill.

It did, however, and Excel found herself learning a very hands-on lesson about the concept of inertia as she fled frantically from the runaway chair.

The combination of Excel's shouts of dismay and terror with the sensation of moving very quickly got Ilpalazzo's complete attention, and, after tucking his video game safely away, he set about shouting various useless bits of advice.

   "Go that way! No, no, not _that_ way, the _other_ that way!"

Excel, in a flash of true Excel-like thinking, decided to veer about the hill crazily in as close an approximation as she could get to running on both sides at the same time. That way, she reasoned, she would be right either way, and the chair would be so confused, it would stop. Then, naturally, Lord Ilpalazzo would be so impressed by her brilliance and "outside the box" thinking that they would give up on the mission and go somewhere to…get warmed up.

However, at that point, Ilpalazzo seemed to be too busy shouting thoroughly unhelpful orders at her to think about anything else.

   "Stop going _that_ way, and go _that_ way instead!"

Another, even more useless favorite was,

   "Damn it, Excel, stop this thing!"

   "Oh, yeah, right," Excel wheezed. "How do I do that? And why is this thing following me?! It's possessed, isn't it? Oh, Lord Ilpalazzo, as soon as I can find a good place to stop and regroup, your Excel will save you from the clutches of this demon chair! Damn it, chair, stop chasing me!"

Indeed, if one had happened to glance quickly at the scene unfolding on That Snowy Hill Somewhere in Siberia, one might have wondered in confusion why the chair seemed to be following Excel very closely, no matter which way she zigged and zagged.

If one had chanced to look a little more closely, though, one might have wondered in even greater confusion why Excel was gripping the reigns attached to the throne, very tightly, and dragging it in strange squiggly patterns all the way down the hill.

However, one would have had little time to watch either of these things, as at the end of the hill was a sharp twenty-foot drop which Excel, in her desperation to escape the wrath of the chair, failed utterly to notice.

Ilpalazzo was a little more aware of it, but unable to do anything, as getting Excel to pay attention to anything at that moment was about the equivalent in difficulty to making a decent living selling Avon merchandise at a Hell's Angels convention. Babbling incessantly about the cold, the snow, the spirits possessing the chair, her itchy wool sweater, turkey dinners, bunnies learning to tap-dance, and the secret meaning behind 'Happy Birthday', Excel was, in fact, having the time of her life.

However, her enjoyment of the situation decreased abruptly when, feeling the chair nipping at the backs of her heels, she made a mad leap to the side.

From here, the chair continued on down the hill, her mass not being sufficient to anchor it in place.

It was at this point that Ilpalazzo, still enthroned and coolly watching the events unfold, frowned and wondered aloud,

   "Just how long is this hill, anyway? It only looked about four feet long from the top."

As he finished this pondering, he began to notice a strange sensation in the pit of his stomach, somewhat akin to that of learning just how much the new improvements to the underground headquarters would cost, or that his internet girlfriend was secretly Bob the Far-Too-Friendly Puchuu in disguise.

When he glanced to the sides to see the grey, featureless sky rushing past, and then up to see the edge of the cliff off of which they had flown rapidly becoming a little dot, he nodded calmly, realizing what had happened. Then, just as calmly, he withdrew his video game and set about wooing the cute li'l bespectacled redhead in the library.

In the meantime, Excel, who had been dragged from the cliff face-first by the reigns wrapped tightly around her wrists and waist, was reflecting that she enjoyed falling feet-first more, although the lack of tentacle monsters waiting for her below would be a nice change.

The exchange of falling down the pit to which she had become so accustomed for falling head-first off a snowy cliff became an even better deal in the cold-addled mind of Excel when she landed with a thump that forced all air from her lungs for a time, directly across Lord Ilpalazzo's lap.

The aforementioned Illpalazo blinked several times, staring rather uncertainly at the girl's backside, pointing slightly up into the air, as a result of her awkward position.

   "Spanking isn't exactly my thing," Excel began, breaking into his thoughts, "but Excel is open to experimenting!"

   "Must…have…restraint," a tall, bespectacled girl with rampantly curly hair, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the author whimpered from her position at the top of the cliff, her voice echoing throughout the barren, dazzlingly white wasteland that was not the future. "Too soon…for blatant…'shippiness or…pointless…smut!"

   "Hey, hey, hey, it's never too soon for pointless smut!" one of the hummingbirds that had previously been darting around the underground headquarters of ACROSS, but had gotten bored and thus decided to follow the strange-looking procession of a madly babbling girl dragging a massive red chair, argued.

However, as neither Ilpalazzo, nor Excel, nor Rhianwen could grasp the intricacies of Hummingbird, no one paid it any mind.

Instead, Excel, who was reflecting in faint disappointment that this wasn't as much fun as she had imagined, shifted slightly, trying to find the best way to climb off of the cape-wearin' man's lap without injuring…certain things that she especially wanted to keep in good working order.

At this, Ilpalazzo noted with great interest that he might not need the dating simulator at the moment; one of its pet situations seemed to have dropped into his lap, so to speak.

   "Okay, that's it!" Rhianwen proclaimed as she leapt from the top of the cliff and landed ignominiously head-first in a snow-drift. She dragged herself to her feet, sputtering and coughing up snow. Then, gathering together what shreds of her poor abused dignity remained, she turned to Excel and Ilpalazzo. "I give up! I have to take some time off from this story until I can get my mind out of the gutter! So you two just wait there, and…I'll be back."

Both watched, a little bemused, as Rhianwen scampered off after a bunny that had happened past and caught her eye.

   "Well, what do you suppose we should do now, Excel?" Ilpalazzo asked casually.

   "I don't know," Excel began hesitantly, hoping that this wasn't one of those trick questions that had no right answer – only answers that were less wrong, and thus would warrant less severe punishment, than others. "I guess she's the author today. If we don't do what she says, she could do anything to us! She could drop us into a volcano that opened up right below us for no reason, or she could make an army of penguins take over the world and turn us into their love slaves, or she could throw us in a Mexican prison with Emeril and his fifty-seven clones, who would probably show us a whole new meaning to the phrase, 'Bam! Kick it up a notch!' Or she might do something _really _weird!"

   "You make your point, Excel. We'll wait for now."

And so, thus deciding, Ilpalazzo withdrew his video game from a pocket somewhere within the folds of his cape, and once again cursed the lack of mobility that mittens provided.

Excel rested her chin on her hands, elbows supported by being propped up against the outside of Ilpalazzo's right leg, and began to whistle.

Seconds later, she became aware of a pair of golden eyes glaring down at her.

   "Don't. Whistle," Ilpalazzo commanded forebodingly.

A few seconds later…

   "And don't hum."

Another few seconds later…

   "And don't tap!"

Another few seconds…

   "And especially don't sing!"

Another few seconds…

Excel and Ilpalazzo glared up at the sky and exclaimed in unison,

   "Will you end the chapter already?!"

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End Notes: Whoa. So far, abysmally out of character. I can't write Excel. I mean, I can't write anyone else in this universe, but it's especially glaring in the case of Excel. She's so great, and I just can't get a handle on her at all!

Not only that, I'm completely unable to infuse my writing with the chaos and energy of Excel Saga. Oh, well. It's kind a fun anyway. I hope. And it'll get stranger. Once I get more into the swing of the universe.__


	2. Why'd it Get all Dark and NonExisting?

Chapter 2

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It was just another normal day in Random Snowy Location in Siberia. The snow was falling, the air was crisp – or rather, was cold enough to freeze the stoutest of hearts – and the sky was a dull grey.

In addition, mass murderers that were also human/badger hybrids with a leaning toward the career of an insurance salesman were roaming the frozen plains, searching gleefully for victims which they might first insure and then devour.

"Hey, hold on," Phil the Human/Badger Insurance Salesman requested, frowning as he came to a stop.

"What?" Anton the Human/Badger Insurance Salesman asked, somewhat annoyed at this delay.

"What are we doing here?"

"Whaddaya mean?"

Phil shrugged.

"Well, I just mean that Siberia isn't really overrun with human/badger insurance salesmen. It's not like it's some sort of biological imperative for us to be here. That's just an inaccurate bit of nonsense thrown out by an idiot who likes to pretend that she knows what she's talking about."

"You mean, kind of like the cliché that Siberia is always freezing and snowy, with skies of dingy gray?" Anton asked with a smirk.

Phil blinked, then nodded thoughtfully.

"I guess this Rhianwen kid is buying into a lot of stereotypes unquestioningly because it's easier than doing actual research."

"What're you gonna do?" Anton asked with the air of accepting the situation easily because it was the only possible option. Then, as a flurry of movement against the snow caught his eye, he grinned toothily. "Hey, look! It's a bunny!"

"Let's get it!" Phil suggested eagerly, and the two old friends set off together in hot pursuit of the bunny, whom they would first insure at exorbitant rates that the bunny wouldn't bother paying but would still for some reason be outraged about, and then devour.

However, as a very colorful, energetic, and loud speck on the horizon caught Phil's eye, he came to a dead stop and tugged at Anton's arm to get his attention.

"What do you think that is?"

Anton peered intently at the speck, which seemed to be approaching, getting larger, louder, more colorful, and more energetic as it did so.

"Well, it's not a bunny. That's for sure," he said airily and pointedly.

"You don't know that! It might be a really big bunny!"

Anton rolled his eyes.

"Fine. We'll wait for it," he said grudgingly.

And so the two human/badger hybrid insurance salesmen stood shoulder to shoulder, arms crossed intimidatingly, and watched the speck, which had somewhere along the way turned into an exceedingly hyper little blondish girl dragging a gigantic red chair and within that, a man with humungous shoulders, behind her.

"Weird," Anton noted.

"Uh, bud? It doesn't seem to be slowing down," Phil pointed out nervously.

And indeed, both girl and chair seemed to have no intention of slowing down, much less actually stopping. 

"They'll stop," Anton assured him.

Phil wondered at the odd thoughts that popped into his mind at times like this. What possible relevance could the phrase, 'Famous last words' have right now?

As it so happened, this silent question was to be Phil's last thought, for as he was in the process of thinking it, the girl and the chair had sped over the snowy slopes, and had finally collided with Anton and Phil, the girl first trampling them to the ground, and then the massive chair acting much in the same manner as a steam roller might.

And so it was that the illustrious race of Human/Badger Insurance Salesmen native to Siberia died out entirely.

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"I wonder what that bump was," Excel murmured. "And where those two badger-lookin' guys that were waiting for us went."

"You'll want to head right when you reach the tree," Ilpalazzo called.

"Right!" Excel chirped enthusiastically, turning sharply to the right.

Ilpalazzo clung tightly to the arms of the chair as it swung in a quick, wobbly half-circle.

"Not now," he said, exasperated. "When we reach the tree! That's at least another hundred yards from here!"

"Oh, yeah," Excel laughed sheepishly, whirling back to the right.

Ilpalazzo grumbled to himself, fingers digging once more into the armrests, as the chair swung back the left.

"We're at the tree now!" the girl's excruciatingly cheerful shout drifted back to him. "So haaaaaaaaaaaaaaang on!"

With that, she reared back, shuffled slowly around until she was facing right, and then took off into a mad sprint.

"Running, running, running! I feel light and free like an inert gas in a salad mixer! Happy as a clam-digger on Fishstick Wednesday when I'm running, running, running!" Excel sang merrily, utterly unheeding of the man a few feet behind her, trying desperately to get her attention.

"EXCEL! STOP!" Ilpalazzo howled futilely, as the song continued, growing louder and more enthusiastic each second.

Oh, how desperately he wished he had his pit at a time like this! Well, one would have to make do with what one had. 

And so, with one last wistful look at his hand-held dating simulator, Ilpalazzo hurled it at the back of the runaway Excel's head.

Unfortunately, Excel was not the only one of the two with a shaky grasp of some of the laws of physics.

Ilpalazzo had thrown the game with all his might, but had failed to account for his own movement, and for Excel's. Thus, the game sailed ahead a few feet, before smacking him directly in the face as he caught up with it.

"Ow," he groaned, rubbing his sore nose gingerly.

Then, once the pain had faded a little, he decided with a shake of his head that there was really only one more option. Reaching into his cape, he withdrew an object that he had on instinct packed for just such an emergency as this. Or for a completely different, much more fun situation.

Uncurling the long cord from its handle, he brandished the whip and swung it forward. Through sheer luck, he managed to catch Excel's ankle on the first try.

Through sheer stupidity, he yanked the whip back, causing her to trip and stumble, and then to roll along the ground, tangling the reigns about her.

This, in a startling display of utter disregard for the laws of physics, caused the chair to sail directly up into the air, flip over, and come back down again.

With an irritated sigh, Ilpalazzo leapt from the chair and into a snow bank.

Once the dust (or snow, rather) had settled following the resulting crash, Excel sat up dizzily.

"Did you say something, Lord Ilpalazzo?" she called back to him.

"Nothing terribly important, Excel. Only that we just turned right to get off the main path while I checked the map. We don't want to be a traffic obstruction, after all."

Excel was surprisingly quiet as this sank in.

"How far does Lord Ilpalazzo believe we've gone out of our way and thus delayed the completion of our mission for the glory of ACROSS?"

"It depends how quickly you can run," he replied with a tiny smile.

The young woman leapt eagerly to her feet.

"You know the speed we were doing just now? Double it, add fifteen, carry the six, find the square root, divide that by pi, and then multiply the whole thing by fifteen thousand nine hundred and twenty-six!"

Although a part of his mind – the part that never had become used to daily conversation with Excel – was trying to make sense of all this and uncover the logic behind it, the rest of his mind prompted him to paraphrase, very simply,

"Ah. Very quickly, then."

"Yes!" Excel yelped, striking a heroic pose for all of four seconds before flinging herself about the landscape at a dizzying rate. "Fuelled by her love and loyalty for the glorious Lord Ilpalazzo, inspired by the grand mission that we as members of ACROSS must complete for the good of humanity, Excel will run and run and run until her legs fall off, and her eyes grow hazy, and her ears bleed, and her butt gets really nice and firm from all the exercise!"

"Very good, but not today. Why don't we find a place to stay the night, and continue on tomorrow?" Ilpalazzo suggested uneasily. After all, he had barely managed to keep his grip on his chair during that mad ride through Hell frozen over. With a newly re-energized Excel dragging him, there was no way he would manage it this time.

"But where are we going to find a place to stay, all the way out here?"

"Oh, come now, Excel," Ilpalazzo scoffed. "Siberia can't be a completely unsettled wasteland."

"Well, we _are_ working with a cliché version of it presented by an author who isn't big on research," Excel reminded him seriously before snapping back into character and chasing snowflakes.

"But you forget: I have a map," Ilpalazzo announced grandly, withdrawing a tiny folded square of paper from his cape and shaking it out as triumphant music played in the background. He turned around slowly and glared at the trumpeters that had apparently been following them around. "Will you kindly go away?"

"I don't think I ever knew that," Excel commented to the fourth wall in wonderment, scratching her head.

"It doesn't matter now," Ilpalazzo said, annoyed. "What matters is that we use this map to find our way to shelter before another snowstorm that may or may not be characteristic of this part of Siberia at this time of year!"

"O-kay!" Excel exclaimed, leaping to her feet and seizing the reigns before bolting into motion.

"NOT THAT WAY!" Ilpalazzo said in very calm capital letters, the statement growing gradually softer as he was dragged away.

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"Excel regrets to inform Lord Ilpalazzo that we are hopelessly, completely, and entirely lost," Excel regretfully informed Ilpalazzo a grueling three hours later as she pulled her furry coat more tightly around her and plunked down to sit cross-legged in the snow.

Ilpalazzo glared poisonously at her from his throne-thingy.

"If I had my magic cord right now, you would be so plummeting downward into tentacle hell," he said heatedly before snapping back into character…or not. "We are _not_ lost. I know exactly where we are."

"We should ask for directions," Excel said mildly.

"There is absolutely no need of that," Ilpalazzo insisted. "I told you, I know exactly where we are. And that aside, Excel, just who would we ask?"

He swept a hand about to indicate the utter lack of anything that would both know the area and be able to give them directions in any human language under the sun.

"Excel understands Lord Ilpalazzo's point, but maybe we could check the map again?" Excel asked hopefully.

"No; that would serve only to waste time that we do not have. We will continue this moment, to avoid prolonged exposure to the cold."

Presented with one of her favorite things in all the world, Lord Ilpalazzo using long words (some of the others being Lord Ilpalazzo using short words, Lord Ilpalazzo using made-up words, Lord Ilpalazzo using hyphenated words, and Lord Ilpalazzo using no words), Excel quickly forgot what her Very Good Arguments for double-checking the map had been. Instead, shooting her hand up into the air, she barked out an enthusiastic,

"Hail Ilpalazzo!"

"Yes, thank-you, Excel, as thoroughly unhelpful as that was," Ilpalazzo murmured, rubbing his forehead wearily. "Well, let us be off."

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"Hey, hold on!" Rhianwen protested, watching as Excel began to drag the big red chair off into the distance. "You two were supposed to wait for me!"

Both brave, or simply foolish, adventurers turned slowly and glared at the exceedingly tardy author.

"Do you realize that you left us sitting there for eighteen hours?" Ilpalazzo asked conversationally. "Eighteen hours. During which we became covered with snow, chilled to the bone, died twice after being discovered by wolves and being too cold to move – thank-you, by the way, to the Great Will of the Macrocosm, wherever you are," he concluded.

"No problem," the cluster of stars called cheerfully as she scurried across the bottom of the screen.

"Being brought back to life aside, Rhianwen, and even though my lap stayed comfortably warm, even if I did lose all feeling in my legs from the circulation being cut off, you can't honestly expect your characters to simply wait, under conditions like those, for eighteen hours."

"Yeah," Excel agreed. "Eighteen hours bent over someone's lap gets boring, even if it _is_ Lord Ilpalazzo."

"But…but…but…you can't just continue the story without the author!" Rhianwen wailed, causing widespread avalanches throughout the mountains that everyone was fairly certain had not been there before, and had been introduced simply for the purposes of the gag.

Ilpalazzo surveyed her coolly.

"We seem to have done reasonably well."

"Oh, yeah?" Rhianwen demanded heatedly. "Well, just try this!"

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

"Whoa! Why did everything just go all dark and kinda non-existing, but kinda dotty at the same time?" Excel exclaimed as the world reappeared and the ellipses vanished.

"Very well," Ilpalazzo huffed. "You make your point. Now, if you please, some of us would like to get out of this snow and back to F-City."

"Snow, snow, snow! Dancing in the snow! We're so happy when we're dancing in the snow and freezing to the bone and developing hypo-hypo-hypothermiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" Excel sang merrily as she skipped about before dropping to the ground to roll around in the soft white drifts.

"Well, then," Ilpalazzo amended. "One of us would like to get out of this snow and back to F-City."

"Okay, fine," Rhianwen said briskly, business-like for the first and last time ever. "Then you two get going, and I'll get back to directing the action from above, like some sadistic madman."

"Yeah! Whoo!" Excel cheered.

"Oh, my head hurts," Ilpalazzo groaned. "Why didn't I just let her go by herself and perish?"

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"Whew!" Excel gasped. "Getting…tired. Arms…and…legs…getting…heavy. This must…be…how…Hyatt…feels…all the…time…except…for when she…doesn't."

"Excel, why have you begun to speak like William Shatner?" Ilpalazzo called sleepily.

At the heartening sound of her utterly one-sided true love's voice, Excel Excel experienced a rush of energy unlike anything she had experienced since the previous week, when she finished off the extra four gallons of espresso that the three hummingbirds had failed to drink. This, however, played much less havoc with her digestive system, and didn't leave nasty stains on her teeth.

"Don't worry about a thing, Lord Ilpalazzo! Your Excel was feeling weary and heavy-hearted from the four days that we have been lost in a snowstorm, but the inspiring sound of your marvelous voice has worked miracles and I feel once more on top of the world!"

Ilpalazzo nodded absently.

"Very good, Excel," he yawned before returning to his nap.

With that, Excel marched bravely and energetically forward, so engrossed in being renewed and rejuvenated that she utterly failed to notice when, barely half an hour later, the texture of the ground had changed a little.

Rather than the hard-packed snow on top of frozen earth they had been crossing for most of their journey, this had a very slick consistency beneath the snow. Even more worrisome to anyone with an attention span and any eye for detail whatsoever would have been the fishy eyes and fins visible through the ground.

However, Excel being Excel, she did not notice any of this, and thus, when she heard a sickening and prolonged crack, she wondered idly if she was going to see a real, live thunder-snowstorm.

Shortly after, she stopped short.

"Excel has truly done an exceptional job of rising above her grueling situation! The weight pulling me down seems to have nearly vanished!"

And so she continued her trek through the icy wastelands of a cliché and unresearched version of Siberia, as behind her, a large red chair bearing a sleeping man with shoulders that widened the hole by a good four feet, sank quickly out of sight through a jagged hole in the ice.

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End Notes: Well, it's the closest Rhianwen will ever come to a really gripping and dramatic cliffhanger.

And by the way, I'm sorry for all the fourth-wall-breakage cracks about my lack of research. There are very few things that I will not put a little research effort into, but this stands proudly as one of those few things. And, for that matter, I apologize for showing up so often in the story myself thus far. It can only get worse…


	3. Some Sorta Wizard of Oz Thing

Chapter 3

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Within the Great Hall of ACROSS, all was still and silent.

The lights were dimmed even more than was standard.

The massive room was empty, save for the dark-haired girl sprawled out across the cold tile.

Gradually, she began to stir, and then sat up dizzily.

   "Senior Excel?" she called tentatively, glancing about. "Lord Ilpalazzo?"

Her gaze drifted to the front of the room, where it seemed that something important was missing.

   "Wasn't there a very big chair up there before? I feel sure that there must have been, because Lord Ilpalazzo sat there all the time. I wonder where Lord Ilpalazzo _is_, anyway. And I wonder what has become of Senior Excel. I wonder," she concluded, already beginning to feel faint and overwhelmed with the grueling business of living, "if I've missed anything important…"

With that, she collapsed back to the ground in a heap.

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   "Excel is beginning to wonder if something is wrong," a completely different, much more lively girl in a different part of the world mused to herself as she came to a stop to better ponder exactly what was giving her this vague, uneasy sense. She gave the reigns fastened around her wrists and waist an experimental tug. Then she shook her head. "The combined weight of the glorious Lord Ilpalazzo and his glorious chair is not nearly as much of a task to pull as it should be! For almost an hour now, things have seemed way too easy. Excel knows that a matter of mind over matter can do wonders to help a devoted and loving girl such as her cope with grueling and impossible adversity, but surely she should still feel a little tiny bit weighed down by her deliciously sexy Lord Ilpalazzo and his half-tonne chair! Not only that," she finished a tiny bit more slowly as she swung the reigns around in front of her and thus made a horrifying discovery, "but Excel is certain that Lord Ilpalazzo and his chair should still be attached to the reigns. Although this clears up the mystery of why they've been so abnormally easy to pull along, this also means that EXCEL HAS LOST HER LORD ILPALAZZO SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY!"

---------------------------------------------------

And somewhere, somehow, for reasons utterly unrelated, although the timing was almost uncanny, Pedro threw back his head and let loose an anguished howl.

   "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!"

-----------------------------------------------------

Across the still, pristinely white landscape shot a faintly reddish-blonde streak, rambling madly to itself as it went. Every now and again, a word or phrase could be distinguished, such as "must save Lord Ilpalazzo!", or "it's the pit for me!", or "a gingerbread house would be really good right about now", or "I wonder which of the Three Stooges had the biggest feet".

Finally, as the blur caught sight of a jagged hole in a sheet of ice…it shot past, unheeding.

However, five minutes later, it came to a dead stop.

   "I wonder if that was important," Excel said, scratching her head thoughtfully.

She leapt back into motion, this time shooting across the snow in a reddish-blonde blur, backwards.

Once she reached the hole punched through the ice, she stopped and stared in horror as something colorful and woolen lying next to it.

   "That's one of the mittens that Excel bought especially for Lord Ilapalazzo for this trip! He was a little mad that I got pink and purple stripey ones with little kitties on them, but they matched the toque really, really well! The pink is just the right color to match the pom-pom on the top! Of course, Excel doesn't recall seeing Lord Ilpalazzo wearing his toque at all. I wonder how come."

By now hopelessly off-track, Excel took a moment to collect her thoughts and recall exactly where she had been going with all this. Finally…

   "Wait a minute…if Lord Ilpalazzo's glove is here, then either Lord Ilpalazzo is somewhere nearby, or else his hand is really, really cold! Don't worry, Lord Ilpalazzo! Your faithful Excel will hold onto your mitten for you!"

As she crept carefully across the ice to retrieve the small scrap of wool, she noticed something more horrifying still: a flash of red gleamed up at her through the dark waters beneath the ice. Seconds later, a very large shoulder pad floated to the surface.

Slowly but surely, the pieces of the situation began to piece themselves together in Excel's mind. The missing Ilpalazzo, the equally missing chair, the stray mitten, the strange amount of red fabric-type stuff in the water in this part of the world that Excel was fairly certain wasn't mentioned in the travel brochures, the stray shoulder pad. If there was one thing Excel knew about Lord Ilpalazzo, it was that he was a sexy, sexy man that she would like to spend some quality time between the covers with, mrowr.

If there were two things Excel knew about Lord Ilpalazzo, it was that he was a sexy, sexy man that she would like to spend some quality time between the covers with, mrowr, _and_ that he rarely went anywhere without his shoulder armor thingies. Thus, it became utterly inconceivable that he should have simply left one in a frozen-over pond after his refreshing swim.

As the pieces finally congealed together in Excel's mind to create one horrifying whole, she uttered a horrified shriek.

   "Lord Ilpalazzo! Don't worry! Your Excel will rescue you from the clutches of the demon pond!"

With that, she leapt boldly through the hole in the ice, continuing her speech as she sunk out of sight.

And all was stillness once more.

-----------------------------------------------------

   "Oh, boy," Rhianwen sighed. "I think I'd better go back and revise some things."

   "Well, you know, I _could _help you out," a nearby voice drawled. "But you'd have to make it worth my while first."

   "Who's there?" Rhianwen demanded, leaping into a defensive pose and trying to look intimidating.

   "Over here," the voice called, amused.

Rhianwen stared oddly at the armed – and legged – cluster of stars that had sidled up next to her. Then, as a light seemed to break over her face, she gave a joyous squeal.

   "You're the Great Will of the Macrocosm!"

   "My reputation precedes me," the star cluster chuckled.

   "So," Rhianwen began, returning to the businesslike cool that she had experienced by now all of twice in her life, "did you just say that you'd be able to help me out here?"

   "If you could make it worth my while," the Great Will of the Macrocosm reiterated.

Rhianwen's face took on a canny smile.

   "How would this here box of fudge do?"

The Great Will was silent for a moment.

   "Peanut butter fudge?"

   "Walnut," Rhianwen replied.

   "Ooh! Let's talk," the Great Will said charmingly, looping her arm through Rhianwen's and leading her toward the pond that had just claimed the lives of the two main characters of the story.

--------------------------------------------------------

Excel was puzzled. Even more so than usual. She was fairly certain that she had remembered, rather recently in fact, being very, very cold. Now she was quite pleasantly warm, if a little disoriented from flying through space.

She struggled to pry her eyes open just a bit.

   "Excel…" a crooning voice called distantly.

   "Yeah?" she called back weakly.

   "Excel…"

   "Yeah?" she called again, a little less weakly.

   "Excel…"

   "What?!" she demanded, exasperated.

   "Sorry," the voice chirped. "Hold on tight; universe reset commencing!"

--------------------------------------------------------

SPLASH!

Excel struggled vainly against the shocking cold of the water, seeping into her clothes and dragging her inevitably downwards.

   "That…didn't…work," she gasped, each word punctuated by an unhealthy glubbing sound as she struggled to get above water again. "Rose…bud…"

And with that, she sank once again out of sight.

-----------------------------------------------------------

   "Darnit!" Rhianwen exclaimed, angry tears forming in her eyes. "If this happens again, I'm giving up!"

   "I think we need to take the reset a little farther back," the Great Will of the Macrocosm said thoughtfully, munching on the last of the fudge in the box. "If, that is, you give me a good reason…"

With a sigh, Rhianwen reached into hammerspace and withdrew another box of fudge.

   "Thank-you," the Great Will sang cheerfully. "So, shall we go back to the point before Excel reached the pond and simply direct her away from it?"

   "No!" Rhianwen replied proudly. "We go back to the point just after Ilpalazzo fell through the ice, but before Excel unwittingly left him to die, or jumped in after him."

The Great Will of the Macrocosm may have looked at her oddly, but no one could tell.

   "What? Why on earth don't we just go back further and avoid the pond altogether?"

Rhianwen's eyes shifted nervously from side to side.

   "I have my reasons," she replied carefully.

The Great Will of the Macrocosm sweatdropped.

   "Ah. A plot device."

   "Yup," Rhianwen beamed. "Let's go!"

With that, each of them scurried to one side of the screen, grasped the bottom, and flipped it over.

--------------------------------------------------------------

   "Oh, no!" Excel yelped as the massive red chair, bearing the caped man, disappeared through a newly formed jagged hole in the ice. "The demon pond has dragged down and entrapped Excel's fabulously lovely and wonderful Lord Ilpalazzo! Excel must do something!"

Leaping to her feet, Excel struck a heroic pose and prepared to leap into the pond. Then she stopped and put a hand to her chin.

   "Hold on; something tells me that jumping in after him isn't the best way to handle this. I might end up kinda dead or somethin', and Excel has the distinct feeling that she's already carked it several times today."

   "Four times," Rhianwen called laconically from somewhere off-camera.

   "After four emotional death scenes already in the last three chapters, Excel is ready to try something that might not make her so dead-as-Hyatt," the young woman continued, giving no indication that she had heard the annoyingly persistent author.

With that, Excel flung herself down on her stomach on the ice and slid carefully toward the hole.

   "Lord Ilpalazzo!" she called gratingly into the water. "Grab my hand!"

With an annoyed grumble, Ilpalazzo wrapped his hand tightly around Excel's wrist and began trying to drag himself from the water.

After five minutes of desperate struggle against nature doing what nature does best in bad, overly dramatic fiction and thwarting the heroes at every turn, Excel began to wonder dimly if something was wrong.

   "I think you have to leave your cape behind," she said between gasps for air. "It's getting too heavy with all the water, and we can't fit the shoulder guards out of the hole."

Ilpalazzo's eyes narrowed.

   "Never! I would sooner die myself."

   "Now, I'd let him drop at that point, myself," Rhianwen commented idly to the Great Will of the Macrocosm from the sidelines where both were watching intently and gorging on fudge.

Excel leapt to her feet and wheeled furiously on them.

   "Blasphemy!" she shrieked.

   "Excel!" Ilpalazzo called in a voice remarkably close to a whine as he began to sink again. "I've changed my mind! I'll leave the cape! Just get me out of here before one of us dies again. I get horribly nauseous during Universal Reset," he finished.

   "Right away, Lord Ilpalazzo!" Excel exclaimed, flinging herself back down onto her stomach and seizing him by the hair.

------------------------------------------------------

Several more grueling and painful minutes later, during which Ilpalazzo lost no more hair than one would expect after being dragged out of a pond by it – which was a good deal of it, actually, although anime laws dictated that he would naturally have enough left over that no one would ever notice a difference – saw the two bold, adventurous, and very, very went and cold members of ACROSS continuing once again across the snowy plain. With one difference.

The chair having been sacrificed to the Frozen-Over Pond Gods, there was no vehicle for Excel to drag Ilpalazzo in. Thus, she improvised by slinging him over her shoulder – much easier to do, with the shoulder armor having gone the way of the chair – and half-carrying, half-dragging him thus.

To his own credit, this is not a situation that Ilpalazzo would have chosen, had he been in any position to choose. Indeed, at first, he had been content to actually walk for himself.

This had been before he had collapsed to the ground and lay, unmoving.

Although Excel was by no means the "brightest tool in the drawer", as the quaint mixed metaphor colloquialism went, she did know enough to realize that, after her own exposure to the water, she was "pretty damn cold". From here, it was a small leap in reasoning to the assumption that Lord Ilpalazzo, who had been entirely immersed, would be even colder. Thus, it seemed to Excel a foolish decision to try to revive him while outside. And who knew? Maybe if she moved around a lot, it would warm him up or somethin'.

And so, hoisting the would-be city conqueror over her shoulder, she trudged a little wearily, but at the same time with a great sense of satisfaction brought on by the closeness of the soaking-wet-and-unconscious object of her affections, across the plains.

------------------------------------------------------------------

   "Watch carefully," Rhianwen whispered to the Great Will of the Macrocosm, by now a little jittery from all the sugary fudge she had consumed. "This is where the plot kicks in!"

------------------------------------------------------------------

   "Ack!" Excel shrieked, leaping back and dragging Ilpalazzo from harm's way as a little cottage plummeted from the heavens and landed before them with a tremendous crash. "Is this some sort of Wizard of Oz thing? Is Excel going to go inside and discover hundreds of tiny, singing people who will give her candy and hail her as a goddess for inadvertently killing the evil witch who has been oppressing them for years and years and years? Is Excel going to travel for countless days and nights to reach the Emerald City, where a wizard who really isn't a wizard will fail to send her home, after which the Good Witch of the North or somethin' will have to tell her how to use the ruby slippers that Excel forgot to mention she was gonna get from the pancakey witch she squished with her house, thus proving that women are goddesses and men are ineffectual idiots?"

As her exceedingly fast stream of chatter echoed through the landscape and eventually died away, the overlord-laden girl considered the point carefully.

   "Probably not. Although the candy would be cool! Excel is so hungry…"

--------------------------------------------------------

End Notes: [Happy sigh] This universe is truly a wonderful thing. I feel so…unrestrained with my author insertness! It actually FITS for once! [Rhianwen hands everyone a bunny and some fudge and then dances away, singing]


	4. A Girl's Gotta Do What a Girl's Gotta Do

Chapter 4

----------------------------------------------

   "'This is no longer a blank page'," Misaki read slowly from the otherwise empty page, before shutting the book with a snap. "I hate modernist poetry…"

   "You're the one who dragged me to this…this…place," Iwata pointed out sulkily.

   "Bookstore," Misaki said, exasperated. "Say it with me, slowly. "Book…store."

   "There are no pictures! Nowhere! There's not a picture in this whole place! What kind of books have no pictures? None! See? Look at this book," he wailed, grabbing the nearest book and shoving it at her. "No pictures!"

As she read the title, a smirk crossed Misaki's lips.

   "Look again," she suggested, flipping the book around and pointing to the title, and a caption under it in smaller letters.

   "One-hundred and One Favourite Positions," he read slowly. "Comprehensive Diagrams Included."

He shrugged, clearly not understanding.

She flipped the book open to a random page, and Iwata's eyes grew enormous, his nose beginning to leak a slow trickle of blood.

   "This we should buy it?" he asked eagerly.

Misaki looked at him sharply.

[Caution: Violent scene deleted for your protection]

   "OR MAYBE NOT!" Iwata called, words drifting away as he sauntered from the bookstore through a newly-made gaping hole in the ceiling and sped off, totally against his will, somewhere in the vicinity of Siberia.

Left alone in the considerably draftier bookstore, Misaki regarded the large, hard-cover volume Iwata had left on the floor. Then, with a small smile, she snatched it up and headed for the cash register.

---------------------------------------------------

   "Hey, what was that?" Excel wondered aloud, turning hastily in the direction of the distinctly male-sounding howl of fear and the thump that followed soon after.

As she whirled about quickly, the still-unconscious Ilpalazzo's head slammed directly into the side of the cabin.

Excel shrugged, turning back and giving her unlucky boss a matching bump on the other side of his head.

   "Whatever it was, it landed all the way over there, and Excel has much importanter matters to worry about, if importanter is a real word, which Excel doesn't think it is, but she doesn't have her dictionary right now, and if she hasn't got time to check out mysterious noises that could be vicious creatures waiting to devour us whole, she really hasn't got time for matters of wordityness!"

Thus deciding, she returned her attention to the matter at hand.

   "Hmm…Excel has been looking at this mysteriously-appearing cabin for some time now. Four hours, to be exact, because the extreme temperatures, not to mention the lack of food has made Excel extremely weak," she concluded sadly.

Then, straightening, she continued resolutely.

   "Still, when a girl is lost in a snowy wilderness with a man that she wants desperately to screw until even porn stars look on in admiration at her stamina, who has long ago lost consciousness and needs to be warmed up somehow, and she mysteriously happens upon a cottage that may have blankets or a fireplace or both, it can only mean one thing!"

The trees, the hills, the mountains, and Iwata from several hundred meters away listened expectantly.

   "It means," Excel began calmly, carefully setting Ilpalazzo down in the snow, "THAT THE CABIN IS REALLY A MONSTER BENT ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD STARTING WITH US AND NOT INCLUDING PARTS OF MUNSI, INDIANA!!!"

With that, she leapt at the cabin, joyously beating it with a severity that one might expect from Excel if the victim were inanimate.

Mere minutes later, the young woman stood, grinning and victorious, before a pile of scrap-wood formerly known as a cabin.

-------------------------------------------------------

   "Darnit!" Rhianwen exclaimed. "She messed everything up again!"

   "I'll let you get yourself out of this, Ms. Plot Device," the Great Will of the Macrocosm groaned before flopping to the ground in a fudge-induced coma.

   "Fine," Rhianwen grumbled, pulling out a laptop from nowhere.

After a few seconds of rapidly clicking keys, the author shoved her laptop back into hammerspace, finding it nowhere as easy as she had found pulling the laptop out.

   "It's just like packing a suitcase," she noted curiously.

------------------------------------------------------

   "Ack!" Excel yelped in surprise as another cabin descended from the heavens…only to land directly on Ilpalazzo.

------------------------------------------------------

   "Well, I guess I can't blame Excel for this one," Rhianwen grumbled as she once again withdrew her laptop and typed madly.

-------------------------------------------------------

   "I'm starting to think _I'm_ the Wicked Witch," Excel noted as she frantically dove at Ilpalazzo, dragging him out of the path of the cabin currently approaching at a dizzying rate. "Well, Excel will just have to defeat this cabin-shaped monster, too!"

   "Excel, what on earth are you doing?"

At this question, asked in a weak, weary voice, Excel stopped abruptly and turned slowly, an expression of supreme joy on her face.

   "Lord Ilpalazzo! You're awake! Excel has managed to keep you warm enough to be alive!"

   "Well, it seems that you've managed to find shelter," he noted in vague surprise. "Very good."

Excel blinked rapidly, then looked at the cabin. Then she looked back at Ilpalazzo, who had begun to burrow into the snow and doze off.

   "Your Excel doesn't see the shelter that you refer to," she admitted sadly.

Grumbling about nearly everything under the sun as he did so, Ilpalazzo struggled to his feet.

   "Do you see the cabin, Excel?"

   "Yes, Excel sees the cabin…"

   "Then you see the shelter that I refer to."

Excel's expression grew horrified.

   "But we can't go in there!"

   "The sign above the door says differently," Ilpalazzo said, gesturing to the blinking neon sign above the door: **Enter here, all ye weary travelers. Excel, this means you!**

   "I guess it does look pretty convenient," Excel admitted, eyes glued to the sign. Damn those demon houses, how did they know her name?! "But don't you think it's a little _too_ convenient?"

   "Excel," Ilpalazzo began in a clipped, barely controlled voice. "We have been outside in a blizzard for nearly a week. We have eaten nothing, since you threw all our rations at the dolphins that you claim tried to 'attack' us on our way across the ocean. My head is pounding, and I've developed these mysterious lumps on either side."

Here, Excel pretended to be very engrossed in her mitten in order to hide her guilty expression.

   "Nothing in the world would be 'too convenient' at the moment," the conqueror continued. "So get in there right now before I pick you up and throw you!"

   "Right away, Lord Ilpalazzo," Excel agreed with surprisingly subdued meekness, shuffling through the door. 'I wonder why it's unlocked like this. Well, they say you shouldn't look a gift-horse in the mouth!'

With a nod of satisfaction, Ilpalazzo followed her.

However, just as he was crossing the doorstep, a strange thing happened.

The neon sign, which as far as anyone knew had been held together in the very picture of solid construction, began to sag a little, and then, with a soft crack, dropped from the doorway and directly onto the tall man's head.

   "Ouch," he commented laconically before dropping to the ground, unconscious once more.

-----------------------------------------------

   "Hmph!" Rhianwen hmphed, crossing her arms and looking smug. "That'll teach him to come to life and spoil my horribly contrived plot twists!"

-----------------------------------------------

Excel, meanwhile, was behaving in a decidedly Excelish manner, having grabbed Ilpalazzo by one limp arm and begun galloping around in the snow, hoping that this might warm him up. And if that didn't do it, she decided, talking to him would.

   "Please wake up, Lord Ilpalazzo! You were doin' so good at it for a minute there! Oh, cruel, cruel Fate! Why couldn't Excel be taken by the wrath of the pond instead of this beautifully arrogant and idealistic man?! Excel would have sacrificed herself gladly to the Pond Gods if doing so would have spared him! And I'll bet the little munchkins that show up to ask about the witch we've killed won't help us at all! They probably won't even give us any food, those cheap little bastards! Reminds me of the summers I spent with Grandma in Mississippi; she didn't feed me for the whole two weeks! That must be where I got my amazing ability to be absurdly energetic on absurdly little nourishment. Grandma, here's to you!"

Excel threw off a snappy salute in the direction that she assumed to be west, but which was in fact somewhere between south and east. Southeast, if you will.

Whichever direction it was, the process of saluting added one too many tasks for Excel to simultaneously complete, and thus she tripped over her own foot and landed face-first in the snow.

Once still for a moment, Excel's brain caught up with the rest of her, and to good purpose. She climbed to her feet and stared consideringly at the cabin.

   "Hmm…Excel seems to remember that Lord Ilpalazzo mentioned that we should use this place to our advantage. Could it be…that this is the answer to our problems regarding where to take shelter?"

   "Yes!" a severely annoyed voice replied immediately.

Excel grinned up at the sky so adorably that Rhianwen was hard-pressed to remain angry, and was more inclined to pop back into the story long enough to thoroughly huggle Lord Ilpalazzo's most faithful follower.

   "Excel Excel would like to thank you for that prompt answer, and will now comply!"

With that, she marched triumphantly into the cabin, pausing only briefly to hoist Ilpalazzo more securely up onto he shoulder.

-----------------------------------------------------

   "Well!" Rhianwen chirped, looking smug. "I guess sometimes you just have to be more direct with these characters."

   "It won't be that easy," the Great Will of the Macrocosm informed her in a tone both sympathetic and amused.

Rhianwen crossed her arms defensively and turned to watch the action unfold.

   "We'll just see, now, won't we?"

-----------------------------------------------------

   "Now that Excel has figured out all by herself that this mysteriously appearing cabin is somehow important to keeping Lord Ilpalazzo warm," Excel began, gazing about her curiously, "she must decipher the rest of this puzzle."

She put one hand to her chin and crossed her other arm in a thoughtful pose that sent Ilpalazzo abruptly to the stylishly rustic rough wooden floorboards.

   "But what use could a fireplace, a lot of wood, one nice, soft, warm wool blanket, and a bearskin rug possibly be to a lost adventurer and her ridiculously sexy, unconscious-from-exposure-to-cold boss? I wonder…"

The young woman's stream of chatter trailed off into a gasp.

   "Hold on; Excel remembers something. It happened a long time ago…way back on the second volume of the series. Excel and Hatchan were in the mountains panning for gold in a river never thought to have any – gold, that is – and working for a big, burly, mean, badass boss who nonetheless had a soft spot for cute little emergency food supplies like Menchi. I wonder why that stereotype is so popular. There must be big, tough, burly men out there who don't like puppies. There must be some who prefer kitties, or bunnies, or gophers, or squirrels, or pigeons, or ferrets, or badgers, or mushrooms, or something. Anyway, that has nothing to do with Excel's memory of how she and Hatchan got lost in the snow and Hatchan got frozen solid in a big block of ice and Excel somehow ended up with a bad, bad case of frostbite on various unmentionable parts! Could this oddly-appearing memory possibly have something to do with how Excel will bring Lord Ilpalazzo back to consciousness?"

She pondered this very carefully for a moment, carefully settling Ilpalazzo down onto the rug and then plopping down onto it herself and noting wickedly that this would be a really nice place to get naked with that special someone.

   "No! Excel must not be distracted by her own deliciously sordid fantasies right now! She must concentrate everything she has on how she is to help Lord Ilpalazzo regain consciousness!"

-------------------------------------------------

   "So close," Rhianwen wept from that indefinable place where mysterious forces that secretly direct the action like to hang out. "She was so close! She almost had it for a second! What the hell happened?!"

The Great Will of the Macrocosm patted her consolingly on the shoulder.

   "With Excel, dear, sometimes it's safer not to ask. She's a wonderful girl, but she has her own way of looking at the world."

   "Well, then," Rhianwen said menacingly, standing up and pushing her sleeves up to her elbows, a dangerous fire in her eyes. "I guess I'll just have to do something about it."

   "Oh, what now?" the Great Will of the Macrocosm sighed. "And rest assured, I'd be rolling my eyes right now if I could."

   "I mean, I'm goin' down there!"

Will-chan, as she will hitherto be known within the context of this story, as the chronicler has become tired of typing out 'The Great Will of the Macrocosm' over and over, although ironically that explanation required even more effort to type out, scratched the Will-chan equivalent of her head.

   "Again?"

------------------------------------------------------------

End Notes: Whee! It just keeps gettin' stupider and stupider! Luckily, it was intentional this time.


	5. But They're Our Idiots

Chapter 5

---------------------------------------------------------

   "Excel is very proud that she managed to figure out this riddle all by herself," Excel cheerfully announced to no one in particular as she tied a belt around the ends of a wool blanket conveniently left folded neatly on the hearth of the fireplace, forming it into a bundle.

She dragged the bundle over to a chair positioned before the fireplace. As the bundle bounced roughly over the floor, its contents twitched slightly groaned faintly in protest before falling still and silent once again.

   "It occurs to Excel at this point," Excel commented to the fourth wall, "that Lord Ilpalazzo has been unconscious for an awfully long time, considering the sign that fell on him wasn't that heavy. A contrivance, perhaps? In fact, this whole thing smells faintly of contrivance."

Here, she trailed off and gazed shiftily around the room for a moment before breaking into a humungous grin and rubbing the back of her head.

   "But that don't matter, 'cause it's warm and it's dry, and when contrivance is the only thing keeping you alive, along with the capricious laws of anime physics and an utter disregard for logic that can just as easily turn on you and kill you in a really, really stupid way, like being devoured by toast demons, you don't fight it!"

Thus deciding, Excel went on her merry way, dragging the bundle over to the chair, hopping up onto said chair, and tying the belt holding the bundle closed to the ceiling beams.

   "There!" she said proudly, hopping lightly down from the chair. "Now Lord Ilpalazzo won't get even more chilled sleeping on that cold wooden floor!"

It had just begun to occur to Excel's brain to put into words the faint concept of old carpentry jobs not being as sturdy as they once had, as well as the concept of belts maybe not being quite enough to safely support the weight of the average man, let alone a considerably-taller-than-average man, when the door slammed open and a swirl of snow blew into the room to reveal, once it had cleared, a figure covered in snow from head to foot.

   "EXCEL!" the snow-covered figure exclaimed. "What are you doing?!"

   "I'm keeping Lord Ilpalazzo warm!" Excel replied happily, the question of who this was not yet occurring to her.

   "Yeah, I can see that," the figure grumbled, removing her coat and revealing herself, predictably, to be Rhianwen. "But…dude, there are better ways."

   "I'm afraid, Ms. Annoyingly Persistent Author, that Excel isn't completely sure what better ways you're talking about," Excel admitted slowly.

Rhianwen sighed heavily.

   "Okay; you have a hot guy alone in a cabin, right?"

Excel smiled wickedly.

   "I sure do!" Then she frowned. "At least, I would if you'd go away."

   "And there's a fireplace, right?"

   "Yup! See the nice fire I started with the pile of erotic literature mysteriously left out on the fireplace next to the blanket? Although, as a believer in the glorious ideals of the idealistic organization of ACROSS, Excel does not approve of nudie pictures and titillating literary descriptions of body-contorting acts of male and female communion, or female and female communion, or male and male communion – as she thinks there's no point in reading about it when you can be doing it – they did come in very handy to save these two thoroughly clothed people from certain death by freezing!"

   "Uh, right," Rhianwen agreed nervously. _I guess my plan to get them in the mood by leaving my…eheh…collection in a conspicuous place didn't work out as well as I thought it would, _she thought mournfully before continuing briskly."So, you've got him alone, and you've got the fireplace. And you've got the bearskin rug, right?"

    "Yeah," Excel agreed, scratching her head. "This place out in the middle of nowhere has strangely nice furniture."

   "You've got _one _blanket, right?"

Excel struck a dramatic pose.

   "Excel is glad to surrender her own comfort to allow Lord Ilpalazzo to regain his health! Even if Excel freezes to the ground, it will be worth it if he is able to live!"

Rhianwen sweatdropped hugely.

   "Y'know, you don't have to freeze. There's a way you can both keep warm."

   "Did you by chance bring us another blanket, Ms. Annoyingly Persistent Author?" Excel asked excitedly.

Rhianwen scowled.

   "No, and I wish you'd stop calling me that. No, there's another way. From Step 1, again. He is freezing, right?"

   "He should be pretty warm by now," Excel said thoughtfully, hopping up onto the chair and allowing the bundle of blanket and bishie to fall to the floor.

Shaking the blanket free, she hesitantly poked him in the side of the face.

   "Oh, no! He's still freezing!" she wailed.

   "Of course he is," Rhianwen said calmly. "That's because the Laws of Bad Fan Fiction dictate that there's only one thing that's going to warm him up right now, and I'm here to help you figure out what it is. Step 1, once more. He is freezing, right?"

   "I don't know how," Excel whimpered. "I tried my hardest! Lord Ilpalazzo, your Excel tried for you! She did! But all for naught! Now we shall both perish in this barren wasteland that is not the future!"

   "Step 2," Rhianwen continued mercilessly. "You are very, very warm, yes?"

   "Hmm," Excel said thoughtfully, sticking a hand up her shirt. "Ack! Nope, my hands are freezing!"

   "Your hands are freezing," Rhianwen said through gritted teeth, "but you are warm, right?"

   "I guess so," Excel said hesitantly.

   "Step 3: you have one blanket. Now. If you place a warm object, or body, if you will, next to a cold body, the cold body will become warm, if the warmth from the warm body is kept in by, say, a blanket or something," Rhianwen said.

   "Wow! Did you go to university to learn that?"

   "Nope," Rhianwen replied proudly. "Fanfic Biology 101! Anyway. We have all the necessary components to carry out this plan. A warm body, a blanket, and even something warm and soft to lie on. Now, Excel, do you understand?"

Excel turned from the dust bunny she had been chasing across the floor. She cocked her head to one side adorably.

   "Huh?"

   "Gah!" Rhianwen exploded. "Am I gonna have to take Lord Ilpalazzo's clothes off myself?"

The unfortunate author uttered a pained squawk as, the next moment, she found herself gripped by the throat and lifted into the air. She glanced down slightly…into the furiously blazing eyes of Excel.

   "Not if you like bein' alive!"

   "Okay, okay, fine," Rhianwen wheezed. "He ain't my type, anyway," she finished once back safely on the floor. "I guess you'll just have to do it, then. So, get to it! You have an unconscious, unsuspecting man to strip!"

   "Okay," Excel agreed faintly, clamping a hand to her face to slow her nosebleed.

   "Well, I'll just be going now," Rhianwen chuckled, heading for the door. "You two crazy kids have fun!"

Once the door had slammed shut again, Excel stared at the prone figure of the man on the ground. A wide grin stretched across her face.

   "Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do."

Seconds later, once the flurry of flying clothes had stopped, Excel tucked the blanket around Ilpalazzo with the hand that wasn't still attempting to stem the flow of precious blood from her nose.

   "And now," she said, straightening up, "for the warm body."

---------------------------------------------------------

Ilpalazzo woke to the sensation of very comfortable warmth. Considering his last memory of severe cold, he thought hazily that this was a curious thing indeed. Still, when circumstances had taken a sudden and unexpected turn for the better, it was sometimes better not to ask.

The next thing that came to the somewhat fuzzy attention of the man of indeterminate, but probably youngish age, was that he seemed to be at a severe lack of clothing. A glance over at the fireplace a few feet away solved that mystery effectively in the sight of several wet garments hung up on hooks before it.

The third, and perhaps the oddest thing, was the greater intensity of warmth nestled against his side. Now, this did warrant investigating. He touched the shape lightly, prompting a sleepy murmur and an equally sleepy cuddle.

How very odd.

Lifting the blanket carefully, he peeked underneath…

…and started back in surprise and horror at the sight of a strange-looking badger/human hybrid, definitely male, nuzzling against his chest.

   "Damn it!" a voice oddly like Rhianwen's called from the sky.

   "Who in the hell are you?!" Ilpalazzo demanded, ignoring the mysterious voices from the sky and leaping to his feet and retaining the presence of mind to take the blanket with him.

The badger/human stared up at him strangely, then acquired a knowing look.

   "I guess you don't remember," he said wisely. "You was pretty out of it, after all. Well, I'm Bob. That cute li'l lady you's with came tearing past me camp a while back, babbling somethin' 'bout how she needed a warm body. That got me attention pretty quick, and I came back wit' her. I was a li'l disappointed when it turned out she wanted me to warm _you _up and not her, but I figure, me mum raised me to never turn me back on a person in need, so I crawled in here wit' you. You never stirred, so I figured I'd explain when you woke up."

   "Well, I'm awake now, and I've heard this story. Now would you be so kind as to leave?!"

   "Yeah, yeah, sure, but keep your voice down!" Bob hissed. "She's still asleep."

Ilapalzzo rolled his eyes as Bob gestured to a sleeping Excel, curled up on the other side of the rug, and covered, for some reason, with four mittens, a toque, a scarf, and nothing else.

   "Oh, good grief," he muttered, ignoring the badger-man scurrying from the cabin. "The only things that have dried yet, I suppose."

The door clicked shut softly, and Ilpalazzo glanced again at Excel, who had begun to shiver slightly.

    "Honestly, if that girl had a brain, she would sit on the floor and play with it," he sighed, stalking over to her.

Picking her up and tucking her under one arm, he stalked back to his previous position in front of the fireplace. He dropped her to the ground with a thunk that prompted a sleepy protest, but nothing more, and hesitated for a moment.

   "Well, I suppose it can't be helped," he grumbled, settling down on the rug next to her. "I know enough of these ridiculously contrived little stories to know that this one won't end until I do this, so in the interest of getting out of here and back to my conquest of the city as soon as possible, let's just play along."

In the act of spreading the blanket over both of them, he paused and looked down for a short moment at Excel. Her expression was peaceful, and she was notably silent. Verily, he thought hazily, much like a small child, she was decidedly cute when she wasn't apologizing in far too many words for failed missions, or declaring in far too many words her undying loyalty to ACROSS and to him. In other words, during those precious moments when she was silent.

However, much _un_like a small child…

His eyes wandered, seemingly through no participation from his brain, downwards.

A short moment turned to a long moment.

Finally, with much less reluctance than had previously characterized his participation in this greatest of fanfiction clichés, he pulled the blanket over both of them and wrapped one arm around her. After all, once out of the open air, she had become something of a little human furnace…

---------------------------------------------------------

   "Hey, check it out!" Iwata, still extra-giddy with relief at finally being rescued by his friends from the freezing-cold Hell…or something…that he had been trapped in for the past sixteen hours, sent by Misaki's very forceful punch, giggled as he followed that same lovely Misaki, Sumiyoshi, and Watanabe into the small, oddly placed cabin. "I think they're naked under there!"

Misaki's eyes grew wide as she watched the two under the blanket, sleeping peacefully and not paying any special attention to keeping their hands to themselves. The strange amnesiac girl they had found in the middle of the desert and taken back to look after, and the man responsible for turning the city into wreckage populated by mindless drones! Not that the damage had turned out to be lasting – it was rather odd, in fact, that the damage had as good as vanished mere hours after they had all run screaming from ACROSS's floating fortress. Still…

   "Iwata," she began very slowly and calmly as Watanabe proceeded to make strange gurgling noises of hope that Miss Ayasugi might be nearby. "Do you recognize him at all?"

Iwata shook his head, his grin never fading.

   "No, but look! It's Miss Undercover!"

   "Why even bother?" Misaki groaned, head buried in her hand.

**Did you expect anything different?** Sumiyoshi asked silently, gesturing to his subtitle.

   "No," she replied flatly. "I never do. Still, the point remains the same. We should probably help her, shouldn't we?"

   "She looks pretty happy to me," Iwata shrugged. "So, Misaki…are _you _feeling a little chilly at all? Think you might need me to help you get warmed up?"

The next moment, Watanabe and Sumiyoshi stared at the Iwata-shaped hole in the door, then back at the pair snoozing blissfully under the blanket, and reflected with more than a little envy that some people really _could_ sleep through anything.

Just to be contrary, even though the fact that he hadn't heard Watanabe and Sumiyoshi's very similar thoughts made that reason for it impossible, Ilpalazzo chose that moment to wake up.

He raised himself up on one elbow and gazed up coolly, refusing to be disoriented for even a moment, at the group of young people surrounding his happy little nest of bearskin rug, warm, woolly blanket, and warm, cuddly, very naked girl.

   "Might I ask what you people are doing in my…hold on. Where's my bedroom? And…Excel?! Hmm…this reminds me vaguely of morning after the ACROSS Non-Christmas Party…"

   "I think I've seen enough. She can rescue herself, if she likes," Misaki said decisively, starting for the door.

   "Hey, hey, hold on! How can you say that, Misaki?" Iwata, who had just dragged himself back in through the him-shaped hole in the door, demanded.

She crossed her arms.

   "Think about this: what if that blanket slips?"

Iwata thought.

Iwata grimaced.

Iwata ran.

**Run, Iwata. Run**, Sumiyoshi said silently.

   "Okay, look! Is this going to go anywhere?" Watanabe demanded. "Because if we're just going to stand here while Rhianwen tries to make something interesting happen, I'm not giving up the chance that Miss Ayasugi might come outside and walk past my door at some point today, waiting for the impossible! I'm leaving!"

With that, he turned on his heel and left, slamming the door shut behind him with an emphatic bang. As he did not in fact open it first, but rather simply stepped through the hole that his spiky-haired chum had left in it before both opening and shutting the door in immediate succession, this looked quite silly, and prompted Sumiyoshi to proclaim in subtitle as he left,

**Surrounded by idiots…but they're our idiots.**

Misaki smiled tiredly at this as she followed him from the cabin.

   "Do you think someone would buy them for cheap?"

   "Well," Ilpalazzo said rather lamely once quiet had settled once more. "That was…odd. But strangely mundane, compared to the last few days. Not that there's anything wrong with a bit of mundanity," he hastened to add, scanning the skies – or rather, the ceiling – nervously.

   "Wha'z mundiny?" a muffled voice demanded sleepily against his chest.

He rolled his eyes as the source of the slurred question carefully poked her oddly-textured pillow and found it to be rather…fleshy.

This established, Excel busily began putting two and two together.

Waking up to Lord Ilpalazzo's voice was not something that happened to her often. Usually only when she lost to whatever he kept down in the pit that week, and he went down through the back way to retrieve her…simply to avoid the problems of her rotting corpse creating a nasty smell in headquarters, he would hasten to explain.

Waking up naked happened quite often, particularly in summer when pajamas became uncomfortably warm.

Waking up naked, nestled against another person, also naked, was a little abnormal, but had been known to happen. After all, there were times when she and Hatchan got unexpected visitors, occasionally on these particularly hot nights, and had to share one futon. And one couldn't always control what one cuddled while one slept, after all.

Waking up naked, nestled against another person, also naked, and decidedly male, was where all sense of normalcy went flying out the window, whereupon it hit and killed a defenseless gopher, which quite annoyed local animal rights activists. At least, until even more normalcy came flying out the window to hit and kill them.

Waking up naked, nestled against another person, also naked, and decidedly male, after being woken in the first place by Lord Ilpalazzo's voice was so far from normal that it defied all laws of logic, gravity, nuclear physics, and pudding concoction.

As it began to slowly occur to Excel that there might be a connection between all these facts that, on their own, were each rather strange but together made up one terrifying and yet oddly arousing whole, she raised her head and glanced about as one in a trance.

Her eyes lighting upon Ilpalazzo and his definite state of undress, her face grew very red and took on a horrified expression.

Ilpalazzo frowned. This was not a reaction he had expected. Surely, after all her blatant statements to the contrary, the idea of ending up in this situation had no right to be as repulsive to her as it her expression suggested that was. It was one thing for him to have no interest in her; it was quite another to see her equally indifferent to him!

Just as he was about to remark upon this, although without any clear idea of exactly what he was talking about, Excel gave an ear-piercing squeal and bounced up from the rug and proceeded to behave rather like a human gas molecule and shoot about the room at a dizzying rate.

    "Excel knows exactly what this means! She has finally gotten lucky with her wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, amazing, and altogether perfect Lord Ilpalazzo, and SHE WAS TOO BUSY BEING UNCONSCIOUS TO REMEMBER IT!!! Oh, forgive me, Lord Ilpalazzo! There's still plenty of time! Please, allow Excel to get lucky again! She promises that she'll stay awake this time!"

   "Excel! Will you kindly shut up?!" Ilpalazzo requested loudly once able to shake off the mesmerizing effects of a naked young woman dancing crazily around a really rather romantic (and contrivedly so) setting. "Now, before you go any further, you will listen well to this. We. Did. Not."

Excel came to a dead stop and drooped forward rather dejectedly.

   "Oh."

Then she frowned.

   "But…if we didn't do…uh, _that_, why were we in the blanket like that?"

   "As far as I can tell, you thought it necessary to warm me up this way."

   "No, I got Bob to do that. I was sleepin' over there."

He rolled his eyes.

   "Yes, and that is why it became necessary for me to warm you up."

   "Oh, Lord Ilpalazzo," Excel murmured, eyes wide and shiny, hands clasped adoringly, "Excel thanks you so much for your monumentally generous concern for her!"

Ilpalazzo smirked.

   "Concern? I was simply unwilling to let all this trouble we have gone to in the repair of the pit, go to waste."

   "But…may Excel ask a question?"

The man in the blanket gave a barely perceptible nod, eyes still glued on two particularly bouncy parts of the girl now energetically saluting him.

   "If we didn't do…stuff, why is Excel so sore?"

A moment of uncomfortable silence overtook the cabin as one man's face grew slightly red and just a wee bit sheepish and one girl's face, in response, grew a shade of red hitherto unknown to visual artists.

   "How on earth should I know?" Ilpalazzo demanded with exasperation far too theatrical to be genuine.

   "Well, it would make a few other things make sense," Excel said thoughtfully. "Like, why I kept having those dreams. I don't usually have _that_ dream more than once a night."

   "Too much information, Excel," Ilpalazzo said flatly, head buried in his hand. He looked up, expelling a long breath. "Very well. It was the most effective way to warm up quickly."

An expression like a ray of sunshine broke over Excel's face.

   "So…we did?"

   "Yes, but it was only—"

   "YEAH! WHOO! EXCEL GOT SOME! EXCEL GOT SOME! EXCEL GOT SOME! La la-la la-la!!"

Ilpalazzo, still making very certain to keep the blanket wrapped around him in a manner that might preserve his dignity in addition to hiding his increasing…discomfort, grumbled about everything under the sun as Excel continued to whirl around the room, singing ecstatically.

   "I don't have a gun," he murmured to himself. "And there's nothing that I can very efficiently and effectively throw at her. Oh, if only I had my pit right now…"

His eyes grew wistful and shiny, and within his head, the background music that accompanied him everywhere he went swelled dramatically.

After a moment of indulgence in theatrics, Ilpalazzo looked up to find that Excel had not yet grown tired of dancing around the cabin and singing little nonsense songs that really, really clashed with his background music. He rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed.

   "Will you get back here?" he said impatiently, holding up the edge of the blanket.

Once again, Excel stopped short, this time taking on an expression of someone who has just spied a feast left in the open, unattended, after they have been lost in the wilderness without sustenance for several weeks: incredibly tempted, but wary, fearing that they will be met with repercussions if they should dare to take Fate up on its offer.

Finally, warily, she crept across the room and under the edge of the blanket that he held out, where she proceeded to sit, curled into a little ball, blushing madly and avoiding looking at him.

   "So, Agent Excel," he began conversationally. "What do you suggest we do now?"

   "Although Excel would like to think of her own desires and suggest that we make mad, passionate love on this nice, soft rug again, so that maybe Excel could remember it this time, she thinks it would be far more practical, not to mention more useful to the ideals and goals of ACROSS if we got dressed and pressed on toward our goal! The pit will be repaired soon, and once more I'll be plummeting downward into tentacle hell for the sake of your divine wish!"

Ilpalazzo slipped further out of character than he had previously been long enough to pout.

   "You make it sound so pointlessly cruel, Excel."

   "Oh, no! Excel would never ever EVER think that, Lord Ilpalazzo! There's nothing more I could ask of life than to happily accept your punishments and know between times that you're pleased with me!"

   "Yes, well, I'll let you keep that dream," he murmured, rubbing the bridge of his nose wearily. "So. What were we talking about?"

   "Excel don't know," Excel admitted, rubbing the back of her head sheepishly and grinning widely.

He sighed again.

   "Of course. Now, although we could attempt to continue our journey, it does sound as though the storm is getting worse."

   "There's no storm I wouldn't brave to bring ACROSS's grandiose plans to their realization! Snow storms and icy hills and Yeti attacks and scary half-crazy sexually-starved trappers and hunters and falling spikes of ice! Excel will persevere through it all! Her body might have something to say about it, but if it crumbles to dust – really snowy dust – and cannot go on, Excel's spirit will just give it the slip and keep going without it! She might have a little trouble doing anything substantial without a body, but darnit, Excel will try! It's the thought that counts after all, isn't it?"

   "Which would explain why you are generally of little importance wherever you go," Ilpalazzo said smoothly. "However, Excel, although I appreciate your…enthusiasm, I do not wish to foolishly risk my own life out in that blizzard right now. Thus, I believe we shall wait in here, where it is safe, for the storm to die down, simply because I do not trust you to complete the mission on your own."

After all, he did not add, a pit with no one to drop down it is a sad, sad thing.

   "So…what do we do until then?" Excel asked, arm turning oddly bendy as she scratched her head.

He considered this for a long moment.

To be trapped, alone, in a cabin with Excel for who-knew-how-long, and to actually _talk_ to her all that time was quite unthinkable.

Particularly with her tendency to fidget enough for her half of the blanket to continually fall away.

When combined with the even more annoying tendency that this in turn had to distract him beyond mortal powers of concentration, conversation became quite impossible.

To be sure, their clothing would likely be dry now…

He shoved the unwelcome thought back rather guiltily.

   "Well, I, for one, am not entirely convinced that we have warmed up sufficiently. Now, I do believe that we were on the right track earlier when we…er, yes. At any rate, it was not an ineffective method of regaining warmth; it may simply be that it requires more than one repetition. One would not, after all, claim that an antibiotic medication was ineffective simply because it failed to bring about the desired result after one dose."

Growing very red as the implications of what he was talking about hit her, Excel shook her head rather dizzily. Still, if one were to be completely honest…

    "But I've gotta say, I'm feeling pretty warm right n-mphgphgh!!!"

As a pair of lips, rather chapped and cracked from their journey through the barren wasteland that was not the future, although gloriously warm and soft and moist in her mind, pressed insistently against hers, Excel's arms flailed wildly and she continued to make incoherent noises until, somewhat breathless, Ilpalazzo pulled away and glared at her.

   "Would you kindly refrain from the sound effects?"

She nodded dazedly.

   "Uh-huh…"

He nodded in satisfaction.

   "Very good. Oh, and Excel?"

   "Uh-huh?"

He cupped her chin in one hand.

   "You will tell _no one_ about this, do you understand?"

She grinned toothily as, recovering powers of speech and, more importantly for the act being currently discussed, motion, she shoved him backward onto the rug.

   "Hey, I didn't tell about the time at the Party That Happened to Coincidentally Fall Around Christmas Which Enlightened Members of ACROSS Don't Celebrate, did I?"  

---------------------------------------------------------- 

End Notes: Whew! Well, _that_ wasn't how I meant for it to end! Also, I'm wondering if I need to kick this up to an R-rating for the implications of…ahem…shenanigans occurring while one participant was asleep. Oy… :o)

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed One of the Few Multi-Chapter Stories that Rhianwen has Ever Finished, even though it kinda fell apart at the end. :o)


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